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Vegetarian Recipes

Super Natural Vegan Sushi

http://feeds.101cookbooks.com/~r/101Cookbooks/~3/WSBhkgD0Vp4/

I make this vegan sushi constantly. Especially anytime the weather is hot (read:now). It’s a recipe I planned to include in Super Natural Simple, but ended up leaving it out at the last minute. So! They’re making their appearance here where I have more room to talk through rices, rolling technique, and variations. And don’t worry, you don’t need any special tools to make it. This is homemade vegan sushi made with sweet potato fries, seasoned tofu, avocado, kale chips, and a whole grain sushi rice blend. A quick kiss of strong wasabi-spiked soy sauce is my preferred dipping sauce.
Super Natural Vegan Sushi

Let’s Talk About Sushi Rice

The key to your success here is choosing the appropriate rice. One way to be sure your sushi rolls hold together is to use white short-grain sushi rice. For this recipe you’ll combine cooked white sushi rice with other whole grains to “boost” it nutritionally. I’ve found that using a percentage of white rice really helps the rolls come together. More importantly, it helps them hold together, especially important for newbie sushi makers or if you’re having kids help out.

To cook the sushi rice, rinse the rice grains well before cooking. And if you have time to let them soak, even better. I use 2 cups of rice and 3 cups of water, and a bit of salt – scant 1/2 teaspoon. Simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Allow to sit, covered, for 10 minutes more. You should end up with perfect chubby, sticky grains of rice you can then combine with other quinoa, cooked grains, pearled barley, black rice, or brown rice. I’ll outline the ratio I like below, but you can experiment. This organic sushi rice is an example of the kind of rice you’re after for the white sushi rice component.

Seasoning: Traditional sushi rice also uses a vinegar and sugar mixture as seasoning. Sometimes I add it to my cooked rice, other times I skip it. I know this might be a controversial admission, but I’d encourage you to think through a range of different ways you can season, spice, or boost your rice. The rice in these sushi rolls is plain and simple. That said, once you get the hang of the basics, you can experiment if you like! Use strong broth in place of the water in your rice. You can add spices (turmeric, curry blends, etc.) or ingredients like minced garlic, ginger, or scallions. Play around!
Vegan Sushi Ingredients

No Sushi Mat, No Problem!

You don’t need to have a special sushi mat to make sushi. I tend to use parchment paper. A clean linen or cotton towel can also work. If you want to make reverse roll (where the rice is on the outside, line your parchment paper with a sheet of plastic wrap. Do a layer of rice, next add the sheet of nori followed by more ingredients and/or rice. You can see my set up for getting ready to roll sushi in the photos below. Basically this is a long way of saying, you don’t need a bunch of specialty equipment to make vegetable or vegan sushi.
Tofu in Skillet for Vegan Sushi

Vegan Sushi Filling Ideas

As I mention up above, I’m highlighting my favorite “everyday” vegan sushi roll for you today. I’ve made them twice this week! I’ll talk you through the main components:

  • Seasoned Tofu: Marinate slabs of tofu in a simple soy sauce, water, sesame-chile oil mixture. You can grill the tofu or cook it in a skillet (above) until golden. Cool a bit, and use a sharp knife to slice into matchsticks. You can see the sliced tofu pictured below.
  • Sweet Potato “Fries”: Slice sweet potatoes into fry shapes. Skins on or off, your choice. Toss with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, a bake at 400F until golden, flipping once or twice along the way. I tend to use the sweet potato version of these oven fries, but Wayne sometimes buys pre-cut sweet potato oven fries in a freezer bag, and those work great too.
  • Avocado: Thinly sliced, and perfectly ripe is what you’re after.
  • Kale Chips: I like the crunch you get from adding a few kale chips. Consider adding them a bonus if you have some on hand.
  • Sesame seeds: In your rolls, on your rolls, whatever.
  • Wildcards: If I have them sometimes I add a bit of cucumber, spicy tempeh crumble, or I’ll make the sushi with this tempeh in place of the tofu. I love this all-natural wasabi paste, and mix it with soy sauce, shoyu, or tamari as a dipping sauce.

As I mentioned, on the rice front, I like a rice blend with a good amount of whole grains in it, and have had the best results using half white sushi rice mixed well with half whole grain rice. For the whole grain rice portions, I like to cook short grain brown rice with a good amount of quinoa in it. That said, any whole grain blend should work with the white sushi rice. It’s sticky and helps everything hold together nicely.

How to Assemble Your Sushi

Sushi doesn’t have to be perfect to be delicious. Keep that in mind if you’re new to this. I thought I’d post a play-by-play photo series of how these rolls come together. Before we get into it, one thing that is helpful to know if your sushi rice is sticky and hard to work with is this. Use cold water to wet your hands or spatula. It’s a game changer.

Ready to roll: Once you have all your ingredients prepared it’s time to make sushi. What you see in the photo below is a sheet of parchment paper in place of a sushi mat. On top of that a 8×8-inch sheet of nori is placed. About a cup of rice is spread across the bottom third. Pat it down with a spatula so it holds together. Now add strips of avocado, sweet potato, tofu, and whatever else you’d like in your sushi.

Preparing Vegan Sushi on Sheet of Nori



Working from the bottom, use your sushi mat or parchment paper to start gently (but confidently!) guiding and shaping everything tightly into a roll. You can see how it starts in the photo below. 

Demonstration of How to Start Rolling Sushi

Use your extra fingers to keep ingredients in place and to pull the roll in toward the sushi mat. See photo below. The goal is shaping and keeping things tight. Keep guiding and rolling.

Demonstrating Sushi Tuck-and-Roll Technique

Once the rice and fillings have been encircled by the nori, compress and pull things tight one more time. I basically run my hands along the length of the roll making sure nothing is loose. 

Using Sushi Mat or Parchment Paper to Roll Sushi

Continue rolling to the end of the nori at this point, guiding the sushi mat or parchment paper out of the way as you go. See above and below examples.

Finished Vegan Sushi Roll

At this point you should be able cut the roll into pieces of sushi. Use your sharpest knife, keep it damp with water, and clean as you go if necessary.

Super Natural Vegan Sushi Recipe

It’s a lot of fun to explore the world of vegetarian and vegan sushi. Next up on my list is to make a roll using sushi rice version of
Bryant Terry’s Amazing Green Rice. Basically, I imagine it will be very similar to this roll, but using his blender technique to green-ify the rice. Or maybe as we make our way into the fall a mushroom-centric roll. Excited to see your versions!

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Vegetarian Recipes

Homemade Kimchi

Once upon a time, I auditioned for one of those reality food shows, and my kimchi spring rolls got me to the next level of auditions (If you haven’t tried them yet, I posted a budget-friendly version here on the blog!) Why would a recipe like that get me flown to Los Angeles, you ask? Well, the judge asked me how I made my kimchi, and apparently, I aced his test; it’s not simply pickled; it’s fermented! I’ve always loved fermented foods, and this Homemade Kimchi is easy, vegan, budget-friendly perfection—the longer it sits, the better it gets! However, the process is super important, so let’s dive in!

Overhead view of homemade kimchi in a bowl.

Easy Recipe for Homemade Kimchi

Kimchi is a spicy, tangy, and veggie-packed Korean side dish made by fermenting fresh vegetables (think of it like pickles with a probiotic boost!). Instead of vinegar, the magic happens through lacto-fermentation, where good bacteria (the kind that’s great for your gut) naturally preserve the veggies and build the signature sour-savory flavor. I love serving it on rice bowls, tucked into wraps, or eaten straight from the jar as a quick snack. 😋

When I was in my 20s, I took a holistic nutrition course with a Naturopath Doctor in Indonesia. On my sojourn, I had a very long layover in South Korea, where I swear I ate 100 different kinds of kimchi. It helped me pinpoint the veggies I love most in my homemade recipe, but you can use just about any hardy vegetable you have on hand; I like to do a seasonal version as well, using raw pumpkin or butternut squash in the fall. Veggies like cucumbers and zucchini can be used, but because of their super high water content, they turn too mushy for my liking. Cabbage truly helps the texture no matter what else you add, so be sure to pick out a nice fresh head of cabbage!

Overhead view of homemade kimchi in a bowl.

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Homemade Kimchi Recipe

This easy Homemade Kimchi recipe is made with fresh veggies and simple ingredients. Tangy, fermented, and budget-friendly—no special tools required!

Step-by-step photos can be seen below the recipe card.

Course Salad, Side Dish
Cuisine Korean
Total Cost $6.41 recipe /$0.17 serving
Prep Time 30 minutes
Fermentation 2 days
Servings 36 oz (3 x 12 oz jars, 1 oz per serving)
Calories 11kcal
Author Jess Rice

Equipment

  • 3 12 oz Canning Jars
  • Food Processor
  • Large Mixing Bowl

Ingredients

  • 1 Tbsp agave $0.14*
  • 1 jalapeno seeded, $0.41
  • 1 red bell pepper seeded and divided, $1.48
  • ½ red onion divided, $0.54
  • 2 inch piece fresh ginger peeled, $0.24
  • 2 large cloves garlic $0.06
  • ½ green cabbage mine was about 1 ¾ lbs, $1.66
  • ¼ red cabbage mine was about ¾ lb, $0.86
  • 4 green onions $0.48
  • 2 ribs celery $0.30
  • 2 carrots $0.16
  • 1 Tbsp sea salt $0.08

Instructions

  • Begin by sanitizing your workspace and running three 12 oz canning jars through your dishwasher on high heat to sanitize them. Alternatively, you can also sanitize your jars by submerging them in boiling water and then allowing them to air dry.
  • Meanwhile, in a food processor, combine agave syrup, 1 jalapeno (seeded), ½ red bell pepper (seeded), ¼ red onion, peeled ginger, and garlic cloves.
  • Pulse vegetables and agave in a food processor until all vegetables have been broken down into a paste-like consistency, with any visible vegetables all being the same size, minced. Set aside.
  • Prep all the vegetables: roughly chop or slice both cabbages, roughly chop the green onion (discarding only the very tip of the root), dice celery, julienne carrots, remaining ½ red bell pepper, and remaining ¼ red onion. This step is a great time to practice your knife skills or skip laboring over cutting everything and just chop it up coarsely. Kimchi is very forgiving, and it’s fun to have a lot of different shapes that will contribute to the texture once it is fermented later.
  • In a large mixing bowl, combine all prepared veggies and salt. With clean hands, massage the salt into the prepared vegetables until they are all very soft. (It’s arm day, y’all! Use those muscles, and don’t stop!)
  • After at least 10 minutes of massaging the vegetables and salt, add the prepared, processed vegetable and agave mixture. Continue to massage the vegetables and the spicy-sweet processed mixture together for another 5-10 minutes, or until a significant amount of water is released from the veggies, and you can see it pooling at the bottom of our bowl.
  • With clean hands, spoon your mixture into jars and push it down firmly with the spoon once full. You should see a significant amount of liquid brine rising to the top, covering your vegetables whenever you push it down with the spoon (or clean fingers!) Don’t waste the brine; top off the jars as much as you can to cover the veggies.
  • Place lids on jars loosely and wipe down the jars. Transfer the jars to a dark place in your kitchen for 24 hours. I like to place my jars in a spare Tupperware container and keep them under the sink, so they are contained and in a warm(ish) place to help with the early fermentation process.
  • After 24 hours, carefully “burp” each jar by simply removing the lid to allow some of the naturally occurring gasses to escape. If your kitchen is particularly warm, you may want to burp your kimchi after just 12 hours to avoid a small (potent!) explosion. 🙂
  • After the initial 24-hour fermentation period, burp your kimchi every 8-12 hours until you see consistent, active bubbles every time you open the lid. Once you see a lot of bubbling on a regular basis, you can screw the lid on tight and transfer the jars to your refrigerator. It’s done!

See how we calculate recipe costs here.

Notes

*I like to add a little agave to balance the flavors of my homemade vegan kimchi, but I also find it helps speed up the fermentation process and helps create more brine. The touch of agave helps the enzymes from the healthy bacteria really get going! Personally, I wouldn’t skip it. But it is a very small amount of sweetener when considering the high yield on this recipe, so you could omit the agave altogether if you don’t have any on hand.

The total amount of time for fermentation to take place can depend on various factors, such as the temperature of your kitchen. Keep burping the jar every 8-12 hours after the initial 24-hour (or 12-hour) fermentation period until you see consistent bubbles.

Nutrition

Serving: 1oz | Calories: 11kcal | Carbohydrates: 3g | Protein: 0.4g | Fat: 0.1g | Sodium: 201mg | Fiber: 1g

how to make Homemade Kimchi step-by-step photos

The ingredients to make homemade kimchi.

Gather all of your ingredients. Before starting, completely sanitize your workspace and run three 12 oz canning jars through your dishwasher on high heat to sanitize them. Or, you can alternatively sanitize your jars by submerging them in boiling water and then allowing them to air dry. I’ve also shared more on this below the step-by-step photos for reference.

Jalapeno, red bell pepper, red onion, ginger, and garlic in a food processor.

Prep the veggies: While you wait for your jars to sanitize, you can get started on the vegetables. Add 1 Tbsp agave syrup, 1 jalapeno (seeded), ½ red bell pepper (seeded), ¼ red onion, 2 inch peeled fresh ginger, and 2 large garlic cloves to a food processor.

Processed vegetables in a food processor.

Pulse them in the food processor until all the veggies break down into a paste-like consistency. Any visible veggies should roughly be all the same size, minced. Set this mixture to one side for now.

Sliced green cabbage, sliced red cabbage, sliced green onions, chopped carrots, red bell pepper and red onion on a wooden cutting board.

Now roughly chop or slice ½ green cabbage and ¼ red cabbage, roughly chop 4 green onions (discarding only the very tip of the root), dice 2 ribs celery, julienne (thinly slice) 2 carrots, remaining ½ red bell pepper, and remaining ¼ red onion. You can also chop up everything coarsely if desired (this recipe is very forgiving!)

Prepped kimchi veggies in a mixing bowl.

Massage the vegetables: Add the prepped vegetables to a large mixing bowl and sprinkle with 1 Tbsp salt. With clean hands, massage the salt into the vegetables until they are all very soft (about 10 minutes).

Processed vegetables and prepped vegetables in a mixing bowl.

After at least 10 minutes of massaging, add the processed vegetables and agave mixture from your food processor to the bowl.

A hand massaging salt into prepped vegetables in a bowl.

Massage the vegetables with the spicy-sweet processed mixture for a further 5-10 minutes or until a significant amount of water has been released from the veggies.

A hand massaging salt into prepped vegetables in a bowl.

You should see it pooling at the bottom of your bowl, as shown in the photo above.

Prepped and massaged kimchi vegetables in a mixing bowl, with a spoon portioning some into a glass mason jar.

Add to jars: Again, with clean hands, use a spoon to add your veggie mix to the sterilized jars.

Extra vegetable brine being added to a jar of homemade kimchi.

Push the mixture down firmly with your spoon once full (a significant amount of liquid brine should rise to the top, covering the homemade kimchi as you push down).

Three jars of homemade kimchi.

Don’t waste any of the brine from the bottom of the mixing bowl! Try to top off each jar with as much as you can. You ideally want all the veggies to be submerged in the brine for fermentation.

Lids added to three jars of homemade kimchi.

Ferment: Place the lids on the jars loosely and wipe down the sides of the jars. Now, place the jars in a dark place in your kitchen for 24 hours. (I like to place my jars in a spare Tupperware container and keep them under the sink so they are contained and in a warm(ish) place to help with the early fermentation process.)

A jar of homemade kimchi after one day.

Once it’s been 24 hours, carefully ”burp” each jar by removing the lid. This allows some of the naturally occurring gases from the fermentation process to escape the jars. If your kitchen is quite warm, you may want to ”burp” your jars after 12 hours, not 24, to release the gases and avoid any small explosions!

After the initial 24-hour fermentation period, you want to burp your jars every 8-12 hours until you see consistent and active bubbles whenever you open the lid. As soon as you see lots of bubbling on a regular basis, screw the lid on tight and transfer the jars into your refrigerator. Now it’s ready to be eaten!

Overhead view of homemade kimchi on a bed of white rice.

What is lacto-fermentation?

I mentioned lacto-fermentation earlier, but I just wanted to touch on what that actually means. It’s a natural preservation process where good bacteria (lactobacillus) feed on the sugars in the veggies and produce lactic acid. That acid gives kimchi its tangy flavor and helps keep it safe to eat. This is the same process used when making sauerkraut and dill pickles. But before that can happen, we need to salt the veggies.

Salting helps draw out moisture, slows the growth of harmful bacteria, and creates a brine that sets the stage for fermentation. So, yes, all that massaging the veggies isn’t just a good workout—it’s vital for the lacto-fermentation process!

Important Recipe Success Tips!

  1. CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN! Whether you’re experimenting with this recipe, sauerkraut, pickling, brewing beer, or making kombucha, you want to make sure you’re always working with clean materials when it comes to fermentation. We are trying to promote healthy bacteria, not the bad kind!
  2. Sanitize your jars. Following on from the previous point, you must sanitize your jars before starting this recipe. Run them through the dishwasher on high heat, submerge them in boiling water and let them air dry, or give them a bath in a food-grade hydrogen peroxide and water mix (follow the label for the correct ratio and instructions).
  3. Keep it submerged. You can use the rough ends of your cabbage and red onion or the butts of carrots to help keep the prepared vegetables submerged in the brine during the fermentation process. Just put the lid on top after you add the rough vegetable ends. Before you get to the refrigerator step, discard those pieces of veggies that didn’t go beneath the brine. If you skip this tip, you can scrape off the top of the kimchi if it doesn’t sit underneath the brine. (Sometimes this happens if you are short on brine.) Everything underneath will be fermented just right and safe to eat!
  4. Don’t tighten the lid during fermentation. Make sure to leave the lid loose while your vegetables ferment. Tightening the lid too early can lead to pressure buildup (and possibly a kimchi explosion…not fun!)
  5. Use a sea salt with no additives. Stick to plain sea salt with no additives. Additives can interfere with fermentation, and I want you to give those good bacteria the best chance to thrive!

Serving Suggestions

I love piling this recipe for kimchi on scrambled eggs…it adds just the right kick to a simple breakfast. For lunch or dinner, I’d toss it into fried rice or add it to an easy rice bowl (our Bibimbap recipe is perfect for this!). And, of course, I couldn’t make my kimchi spring rolls without it. Or, if you want a comfort food twist, it’s amazing in quesadillas with some melty cheese. You can also spoon it over grain bowls, stuff it into wraps and sandwiches, or add it to any salad for an extra punch of flavor.

How to Store

This recipe can last for several months in an airtight jar in the fridge. Be sure to use clean fingers or utensils whenever you grab some, as introducing new bacteria can shorten its life span or throw off the flavor. Also, make sure the top layer is always submerged under the brine to keep everything fresh and safe. If anything starts to look or smell off, it’s best to toss it and start a new batch.

The post Homemade Kimchi appeared first on Budget Bytes.

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